Social worker Darshan Naik writes to Education Minister for creating better infrastructure for IIITS students forced to study in tin shed

Following a report in The Blunt Times (TBT) highlighting the plight of the IIITS students studying in the tin shed at the under construction site in Kamrej, Naik dashed off the letter to the Education Minister seeking his immediate intervention and action to ensure that the students get better facilities to study or else they should be allowed to use the SVNIT campus.

“As per the report in The Blunt Times, IIITS, which is accorded the status of the Institute of National Importance (INI) reminds me of the schools in interior villages where students take lessons under the tin shed,” said Darshan Naik. “Similarly, the graduates of IIIT, who would be offered the highest annual pay packages by the corporate companies, are forced to study in the tin shed classrooms”

The Central Government took more than four years to provide full-time teaching staff at the IIITSurat, and the institute was reliant on the infrastructure and teaching staff of the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology (SNVIT). Previously, the IIITS operated from the SVNIT campus in Surat, but the government recently allotted a 28-acre plot of land near Kamrej, on the outskirts of Surat near the National Highway.

The construction work at the IIITS has begun, and students are being forced to attend classes under tin sheds and amid the noise of the construction workers. It is pitiful for students of such stature to study under tin sheds.

During the pre-Covid period, the classes were held at the mentor institute at SVNIT Surat. The Memorandum of Understanding signed by SVNIT and IIIT will expire in 2022. According to the IIITS Students’ Body, the institute’s management has not provided any facilities such as classes, laboratories, founds, or infrastructure.

Naik said the students are still called for classes at the incomplete institute and are offered lodging at a boarding school’s hostel located 12 kilometers away in Valthan, with no lunch except on weekdays. Four students share the hostel rooms as well.

Parents of the students who visited the college were astounded to see the sorry state of affairs at the IIITS. The college is still under construction, with nothing to call it a college but tin sheds. Furthermore, the college is located in a flood-prone area and was not properly developed.

“It is my humble request and prayer to your good office to provide basic infrastructural facilities to the IIIT students in Surat,” said Naik